I’m including the whole transcript below after the embedded video but the real heart of it is captured in a few slides which I’ll reproduce here in text for better future searchability.
First is a list of forms of friction (thanks to
Aaron Parecki
for first defining this notion of frictionlessness for self-tracking):

Entering data

Charging a device

Syncing

Taking devices on and off (e.g., if not waterproof)

General usability

Mostly I’m focused on the first item in that list, entering data.
(The other items are why I like, for example, my Misfit Shine for step counting.)
Which is to say automatically tracking data.
Here’s a list of metrics that can be automatically tracked and sent to Beeminder along with the gadgets or services you need to do so:

Clearly a lot of options for frictionless tracking (and beeminding!) and the possibilities are exploding.
This is a big part of the Internet Of Things.
It’s also about to get cheap and easy to have sensors on everything.
One I’m particularly excited about on the horizon is the
Droplet physical button.

Ok, here’s my now slightly outdated talk!

Hi, I’m Daniel Reeves, cofounder of Beeminder, here to talk about Frictionless Tracking with Beeminder Autodata.
Beeminder is Quantified Self plus commitment contracts, or data-oriented behavior change.
So we’re all about leveraging your QS data to impose discipline on yourself.
But mustering the discipline to enter data can be a catch 22.
Which is why we love ways to automatically collect data about oneself, and Beeminder has ways to help with that.

I know some of you have no interest in the commitment device aspect of Beeminder.
It’s not for everyone.
But this is of more general interest, at least for a Quantified Self audience, whether or not you’re into artificially imposed discipline.

Here’s the collection of Quantified Self apps and services and gadgets that Beeminder currently integrates with, the most recent being Skritter, for learning Chinese and Japanese.

We’re proud to say this list has tripled since the previous QS conference.
We’ve been pushing hard to make Beeminder integrate with as much of the Quantified Self world as possible.

In fact, we made a quantum leap in that regard when we recently added Zapier and IFTTT Channels.
Now those platforms are doing much of the work for us.
Every time another QS tool gets on the IFTTT or Zapier trains, that’s one more automatic source of data that can be fed to Beeminder.

For anyone who doesn’t know about IFTTT and Zapier, IFTTT stands for “If This Then That”.
It’s a service that lets you connect two different web services or apps together using Recipes of the form “if this happens” then “do that”.
You pick a Trigger — new instragram photo, rain forecast, you name it — and IFTTT will do some specified Action whenever the triggering event happens.

Zapier is the same idea but is more nerd focused, giving you more control over the recipes you set up and is a little less friendly for non-technical users.
It also tends to focus on startups as its target demographic, meaning it has lots of channels for productivity tools like to-do lists and time trackers.
It’s freemium and if you use it very heavily you’ll probably want to pony up for a premium plan.
IFTTT, on the other hand, is totally free, and really impressive in its simplicity and slickness.
Both are powerful tools for automating data collection about yourself.

Back to Beeminder, the goal is to eliminate the step of actually entering data.
Going to a website to enter data is a pain.
We have smartphone apps, which may help.
In some cases replying to our email bot with data can remove most of the friction.
But truly frictionless self-quantifying means you just do the thing you want to measure and never give a single thought to the actual measuring.

Maybe you wear a Fitbit or a Misfit or a Garmin Vivofit or a Jawbone UP.
If you connect any of those to Beeminder, letting Beeminder read the data that those gadgets are collecting, then Beeminder will automatically make a graph for you showing your cumulative number of steps or hours of sleep.

Whenever you’re in danger of going off track, meaning your average number of steps (or whatever you’re measuring) has fallen below the goal you set for yourself, Beeminder will warn you.
If you don’t heed the warning, it charges your credit card (though we’re very friendly about it and you can easily cry foul, unless you
weaselproof yourself,
but that’s another story).

We recommend automatability as the top criterion for
what metric to beemind
in the first place.
Like maybe you have a goal of getting in better shape.
Body weight isn’t the greatest metric for that, for a few reasons.
But it is very easily automatable, thanks to Withings and Fitbit’s Aria scale, both of which we integrate with.
You literally just stand on the scale and your graph is updated.
And, especially if you’re well above your ideal weight, it’s a fine proxy for fitness.

Or take gym workouts.
Thanks to the iOS and Android location Channels on IFTTT, it’s dirt simple to set up a recipe to automatically send a +1 to Beeminder whenever you come within some radius of your gym.
A personal favorite of mine is built in to the Beeminder Android app:
I do pushups by putting my phone on the floor and touching my nose to it with every repetition.
Beeminder counts the pushups that way and magically updates my graph.

For productivity, we highly recommend RescueTime, which beautifully automates time tracking and integrates with Beeminder.
We have a vaguely similar tool called TagTime that’s much less friendly and tries to hit the sweet spot between fully automatic tracking and manual time tracking.
But since this is all about frictionless tracking, RescueTime is where it’s at.

One more option for Android users is
our Tasker integration.
Tasker is like IF This Then That for your Android phone.
You can set up Tasker tasks that trigger based on any conceivable event that your phone is aware of — the screen coming on, any app opening or closing, location, you name it — and cause data to be automatically sent to Beeminder, either directly, for counting events, or by starting and stopping a timer, though RescueTime is generally a simpler way to measure time spent.

Finally I’ll quickly mention that Beeminder has an API so the sky is really the limit for automating feeding your Beeminder graphs.
We also intend to keep adding more official integrations.
So makers of other QS tools, please talk to us!
As our current integration partners will attest, it’s a pretty nice feature to offer your users who may want to use your tool more than they do, if only they could construct a small kick in the pants to stay on the wagon.

Start Here

Does Beeminder sound super crazypants? Just confusing? One of the first things you may want to check out is our User's Guide for New Bees. Check out other posts we're most proud of by clicking the "best-of" tag below. If you're a glutton for honey, the "bee-all" tag has everything we still think is worth reading. Other good ones are the "rationality" and "science" tags, if you're into that.

Akrasia

Akrasia (ancient Greek ἀκρασία, "lacking command over oneself"; adjective: "akratic") is the state of acting against one's better judgment, not doing what one genuinely wants to do. It encompasses procrastination, lack of self-control, lack of follow-through, and any kind of addictive behavior.
wikipedia.org/wiki/Akrasia